Dear Dexter School

Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm in the class that you hired to find out what your mystery powder is. Well, we found out what it was. We did tests on the mystery powder. We looked at the powder. We also studied other powders and and we used Pt, Pr and Iodine.

Some of the test that we did were: we mixed Pt with the other powders to find out if it was a base. Pt stands for phenolphthalein. We mixed Pr with the other powders to find out if the powders are an acid. Pr stands for Phenol red. We mixed the powders with iodine to tell if the powder is a starch. We also used vinegar, water, alcohol and oil to see what the reactions were.

The powder with the green marker was corn starch. When we tested corn starch with Pt, we found out it that it was not a base because it turned cloudy white. When we mixed Pr with corn starch it turned pink so that means it is an acid. When we mixed corn starch with iodine it had the biggest affect, it turned black. It didn't have a big affect on oil, water, alcohol, or vinegar.

Red was baking soda. It was not an acid. It was a base. Its biggest effect was with vinegar. It let out a little bit of gas when the little bubbles fizzed up. When we mixed iodine with baking soda it turned an orange color.

The powder that had the yellow label on it was salt. It turned cloudy white when we put the PT with the salt. It turned yellow when we mixed salt with PR so that meant it was a base. The grains that we saw under the hand lens in the salt were in squares.

The powder with the blue marker was citric acid. The grains were in different shapes. It wasn't a base, it was an acid. When we put iodine in the powder it spread.

The powder with the orange marker was calcium carbonate. It was a base. It turned brown when we mixed it with iodine. It didn't have any big reactions with oil, water, vinegar and alcohol.

The powder with the purple marker was sugar. The grains in it were in shapes like circles. It was not a base, it was an acid. It absorbed the oil, vinegar, alcohol and water. It also absorbed the iodine.

Our group thought that corn starch, baking soda and salt were in the mystery powder. Some of the tests that we wanted to do were to mix Pt and Pr with the mystery powder to find out if it was an acid or a base. We mixed iodine with the mystery powder to see if it turned black, and if it did, that meant that corn starch was in the mystery powder. We also wanted to mix vinegar with the mystery powder to see if it fizzed. If it did that meant that baking soda was in the mystery powder. We also mixed oil with corn starch to see if it got shiny.

We did all of those tests and we found out that corn starch was in the mystery powder . Baking soda was in the mystery powder and salt was in the mystery powder. We found out salt was in the mystery powder by looking at it under the hand lens. It was in little squares and so were the grains in the mystery powder. The mystery powder was an acid and a base because salt and corn starch were both acids and backing soda was a base. Our predictions were right.

After we figured out what the mystery powder was, we looked at the neighborhood the school was in, then we brainstormed some of the ways the powder could have gotten there. We came up with a few ideas then we chose the one that was most likely. What we thought happened was that a truck from the grocery store was delivering food for the cafeteria. They pulled up in front of the school yard and they were delivering salt ,baking soda and corn starch to another place and they accidentally left the back their truck open. So, when the truck started to drive away the stuff spilled out. That might not be true but those are just some of the things that could have happened.

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